The Legend of Zelda

Spent a week in Boston at a conference for our group of docs.  We gathered from around the world.  27 or so of us.  It was great to be able to meet people who’ve been doing this job for the last 15 or 16 years.  

There were also quite a few new folks as our service is growing, so it was also good to get their perspective on what it’s like to be a new person in this job.  Their successes. Their struggles. All were keen to offer tips and I felt fortunate to be able to attend.

A lot of these docs are involved in a lot of really interesting things.  Some have helped in hostage recovery.  Some have helped in relief of natural disasters.  Several spoke of being involved after the Westgate Mall shootings in Nairobi.

It makes you tune into the news with a different ear. While in Boston, the news was full of the Boko Haram kidnappings.  We heard a U.S. Senator pledge that the U.S. was going to send assistance including “mental health assets”  

One of us newbies remarked, “I wonder what they mean by that” to which an older doc said, “That would be you. You're the mental health asset.”  We’re all that close to the next headline.

To a person, they all said that this was the coolest job in the world.  

And it is, or it seems to be when you hear about all the exciting stuff.  Then there are days like yesterday where everything is a hassle.  

Not coming from a bureaucratic background it is a struggle to try and wend one’s self around in this big conglomeration.  And, I’m told that the foreign service is small on the government scale.

I’m reminded of those video games where you’re given a quest and nothing but some rudimentary tools that seem useless at the beginning.  You start out just wandering around bumping into walls and picking up random objects.  

Then you discover that if you bang on trees, coins fall out so you bang on all the trees you can find and you upgrade your rudimentary tools.  You find people to give you bad information and others who are gurus.  You hang on their every word.  

You finally complete some task and run back to the beginning to get your reward or move on to the next level.

This is similar to what it takes to get reimbursed for expenses.  Fill out a form. Send it in. Form is rejected without explanation. Tweak form. Resubmit. Rejected again with cryptic feedback.  Seek guidance from helper who’s assigned to help you. Receive silent shrug. Seek guidance from guru who instructs you to put form back how you had it the first time. Resubmit. Wait. Success!  Why?  “I don’t know”

So, I guess even the coolest job in the world has gotta have it’s downsides.  Just got to learn to shake those trees.

Asian Hair

Until I hit the road, I'd had my hair cut by the same Cambodian woman for more than 20 years. I guess I'm a creature of habit. Or someone told me once that I had “Asian hair” and needed an Asian stylist to manage it. Someone was impressionable in their youth. Anyway, she and I both grew into our Middle Ages together at 4-6 week intervals more or less.  There were lapses in fidelity. She'd shift shops and not have my number. I would be on vacation and get a trim.

Now, I'm away and I've grown shaggy twice with no where to turn. This caused some distress

Next door to my accommodations in DC is a place called Eden Center billed as the largest Vietnamese shopping center on the East Coast. And it is quite impressive.   If you're looking for Pho or fresh squeezed cane juice or Asian groceries, this is the place to find it. Even the parking lanes have Vietnamese street names.  On Saturdays and Sundays the place is packed.

My ingrained belief that I have asian hair lead me down a side entrance to a small shop with some open chairs.  I enquired about a haircut and was pointed to an end chair where a small man was seated.  

I've been there two times now. I call him Rex because that’s the name on the shop window.  It’s not his shop though.  He has a chair toward the back where he’s found 6 days a week.  He says he’ll cut hair until his wife retires.

The man is older. He told me last time he was 72. He does fine with Asian hair. He told me he's been cutting hair since 1979 when she emigrated here.  He was an officer in the South Vietnamese Army and was convicted and imprisoned after the war for something like 7 years.

I like him because he reminds me of my dad.  

Slight build. Artificially black hair long past practicality  Wire frame glasses with black temples.  His crisp white short sleeved shirts with stuff in the pockets. His accented english is different,. He’s soft spoken with not a lot to say, so when he says something it seems important.  

Like my dad, he pays meticulous attention to detail.  It seems he cuts hair one follicle at a time.  His mannerisms are the same when he inserts a new razor blade or brushes the hair off my neck.  The deliberateness that frustrated me as a kid,  in Rex, I can see my dad cleaning a camera lens or chopping up vegetables for a meal or carefully pouring molten lead into a pinewood derby car we made.

It was my father’s birthday the last time I went.  He would have been 81.  Sitting quietly and watching.  A vietnamese soap opera playing in the background. It was a good day to feel that connection.

Dramamine

This is a testimonial to the value of modern chemistry.  Dramamine is a godsend. And, here is why.

After our Trauma First Aid class we were sent over the hill to the local Motor Speedway for a day and a half of safety and evasive driving.   This class was a total blast!

Riding around in old police cruisers (Crown Victorias) we wore helmets which should tell you something.  We skidded.  We learned to get out of skids.  We stopped… hard. Without hitting cones…. mostly.  We slalomed and we mostly stayed on the road.  The photo above is kind of how we looked.  ;) Though there was more Cooter and no Daisy Duke. 

On the second day, we did most of the same things, only in reverse.  We backed through slaloms.  We skidded a bit.  Then we had to do it all in traffic.  All the other students skidding and backing up in a bit of a traffic concert.

Oh, and we rammed! Yes, rammed.  Other cars.  They lined up some junked, but still functional cars and we took turns ramming through a road block.  I could not help but fantasize about the mall parking lots at Christmas time.  This was awesome.

After lunch we put it all together.  We faked out baddies sneaking up behind us, baddies sneaking up in front of us and baddies in their roadblocks.  Baddies, everywhere!

So, where does the Dramamine come in?

This class was a blast to drive, but I believe there is a reason the car was lined in plastic.  Sloshing around in the back of this car while our teacher or other students drove was truly a nauseating experience.  It was all I could do to keep my lunch down and I'm not usually one to get ill.   Eventually I had to be left off at a shelter house.  “The Barfzebo”, they called it.  I wasn't alone.  There was a handful of green souls sitting out for a while.

With motion sickness pills on the second day, though, I was totally able to out ride the bad guys without tossing my cookies. 

Death is Certain

S.A.M spent the last week in  training to prepare us for potential Benghazi attacks. This is a new requirement that everyone must go through now. In a world that is unpredictably changing, it is best to be prepared.

A few score of us headed to the rural outskirts where they've set up a whole training facility for this and other trainings.  

Medic/first aid was on order the first day and a half.  This was taught by former military medics who had seen all sorts of trauma.  Our course was introduced by an affable, straight talking guy with tattooed, post-spinach Popeye forearms. I sat to the side of the classroom, so I could only see one arm tattoo clearly.  It said something to the effect of 'death is certain.'  What was I in for?

Laying around the room were assorted mannequins in various states of dying. Dismemberments, disembowlments, bullets, etc.  Arms and  legs were strewn about.

We spent much of the day learning how to place tourniquets and plug holes. Before our first exercise an instructor walked up with a large red bucket labelled "fake blood."  He connects a hose from the bucket to the dummy's chest and threw down a pad.

He handed me a radio control, the kind you'd steer a model car with. He hands me the control and says this switch make him move and this switch makes him bleed. All I could think about was "I feel bad for the legless chap in front of me, but  does this fake blood stain?, ‘cause this is the  only pair of pants I brought."

"Boom! He's hit! He's bleeding." I start working the levers and sure enought the dummy starts writhing on the floor and a good amount of red liquid spurts out onto the floor as my teammates work to keep him from fully exsanguinating. There we were, four doe-eyed bureaucrats trying to keep our clothes clean.  

But by the end of the day we were all pretty good at that and other things. Patching chest wounds, inserting nose tubes, applying bandages.  All the things we could do to bide time until better help arrived.  

For the last class, I sat on the other side of the room.  The first instructor came back and I could get a better look at his ink.  He crossed his arms once. The full tattoo was less gloomy and more positive. To paraphrase, it was a reminder to  ‘live life fully for death is certain.’

Being Smart and Stayin' Alive.

When you apply to the State Department there are things that they don’t talk about much.  They don’t talk about all the smart people you’ll meet.  I guess you should expect it from what they want you to do to get in.  

There’s a test.  They tell you to study by reading The Economist and Foreign Affairs magazines.  There is an essay.  Actually, I think there were seven essays.  Some people have to participate in a day-long interview to see how you interact with other applicants.

I didn’t have to do that part.  I had to take another test and then I was put in a room with 5 unnamed, unsmiling peers and asked questions for an hour.  I rambled and sweated. Mostly I rambled. and I didn’t think was was too articulate.  But, I must have rambled smartly, because here I am.

But they don’t really talk about the other smart people you meet. But, you see and feel it the moment you walk in. Wander the halls and the snippets of conversations are right out of the news.  What are we doing about Ukraine, or Crimea or the Ebola outbreak?

I work with a man who invented his own style of cardiac catheter. And, another who developed a simple and efficient electronic health record that actually only asks for information that is required.  The reason it is not in use?  “It didn't cost enough to implement.”   

You also get to hear about other smart things as well. For instance, one of the ways to lift a society out of poverty is to have educated women and girls.  Folks in the State Department have found that one leading cause of girls dropping out of school is that boys and girls have to share the same toilets in many rural schools.   When they reach puberty, it becomes a privacy and modesty issue and, so they drop out.

So, there is a program being implemented to try and provide separate bath facilities for young girls in rural areas. A separate hole in the ground opens the world to half the population.  I think that is pretty cool.

The other thing they don’t talk much about is all the danger you’ll face when you head out into the world.  In the last week and a half of our orientation there have been hours of classes, telling us all the different ways we could be injured or killed.  Or raped. There was that too.

All that plus kidnapping, and fire and earthquakes and radioactivity and biological weapons and pandemics and more!  One class taught us how to use a personal, single use gas mask. “Don’t use this in a fire or it will melt to your face.”  Also, “make sure the little red light is on or it’s like putting a plastic bag on your head.”

Another segment taught us when we’ll know to use our nerve gas antidote.  “The room will go dark and you’ll be drooling like crazy, if you see someone convulsing, give them three injections.”

It’s all been enough to give one second thoughts, until they showed a slide at the end of one day demonstrating how most people working overseas get hurt or die.

80% of US employees are hurt or killed in car accidents or are hit by cars. The smartest way to stay alive is to look both ways when you cross the street and don’t drive too fast.

Astound and Amaze Your Fellow Travelers, Vol I

Secret Agent Man will be travelling a lot and is considering a segment called "Astound and Amaze Your Fellow Travellers"   Feel free to contribute.  I'm sure we all have a story.

Like the gentleman pictured above.  This is a bit early in the waiting period, but believe me, he laid right here as the waiting area filled up and was still lying here when I boarded my plane.

What's he doing?  It may be a bit tough to see.  There is a bench of 4 seats.  He has his brief case on the end closest to us.  The second seat is open.  The third seat has his tablet and his carry on suit bag is draped over the fourth seat.

He has taken off his shoes and is lying in front of his possessions.  He has hi-grade, noise cancelling head phones connected to his phone and is using his wait time to call hotel and rental car companies to complain loudly about services he's missed on his travels. We all know now how Hertz has done him wrong with their lack of an upgrade.  I wish I'd video taped this generous use of personal space.

The Icebreaker

Some brief background.

In 1992 or so, a friend and I made an impassioned and impulsive decision to try to make the U.S. Olympic Bobsled Team.  We were in our 20s, fit and had no money. Why not?

                                  

Back then, the U.S Bobsled Organization was a pretty loose organization.  They offered classes at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid.  They provided lodging and food and a great gym. All for free.

We booked in and took the Bobsledding Introductory class which consisted of a brief walk down the course, a video showing many of the more severe accidents and deaths, and a tour of the sled which is a very simple machine.  Then they took us up to the halfway point, stuck us in a training sled and away we went.

It was truly the most frightening activity I have ever done.  At the end, I felt I’d cheated death

But, I did complete the rest of the three day course and got my Bobsledding Driver’s License from the ½ mile point.  We went back the following year, by which time they had significantly increased their monitoring.  When we arrived they essentially said, “Sorry, we don’t care what sort of driver’s license you have, you can’t learn to drive the rest of the course without your own sled.”  Sleds cost around $20,000.

Thus ended my brief career as a pre-Olympian. 

But, I got the t-shirt and the little piece of paper and thus, I believe, the right to claim my membership to the US Bobsled Federation as a miscellaneous fact on the bottom of my resume. This makes for interesting conversation at job interviews.

I give you this background, only to tell you this further bit of info.

Fast forward 22 years. 

In addition to my resume, I also use the bobsled story for those little icebreaker games we all play at parties or work events .  “Tell us a little known or fun fact about yourself.”  This being orientation, of course we play this game at the State Department on the very first day.  And, of course, I use my story.  How else can I compete with a man who tripped Nancy Pelosi, or the female Gold Medalists in the Tae Kwan Do World Championship or the former Special Forces people?   It gets a good response until I tell them the rest of the story, and then the conversation drifts back to those with really big achievements.

Fast forward, yet again, to today.

Our three weeks in orientation is coming to a close and we are due for our official swearing in at noon.  On Wednesday, we received a surprise announcement that the ceremony has been pushed back until 1:45 pm because the Secretary of State, himself, wants to do the swearing in.  Apparently, he likes to do this when he’s in town, which is sort of a rare event if you watch the news.  He flew some 275,000 miles last year.

We are all honored and excited and we gather early.  He has so little time that we practice getting our picture taken before he gets there.  We are able to get from our seats to the stage and set for pictures in under 30 seconds.

He’s a few minutes late having put some foreign dignitary on hold. We all stand and clap as he breezes in.  He’s introduced and then he gives a few brief remarks about the world and how we in the Foreign Service will fit in.

He closes with a few remarks about our class.  He notes the Krav Maga black belt, and the Tae Kwan Do World Champion.  He thanks the former Military personnel for volunteering further service to their country.  And, then he says, “We even have someone here who tried out for the U.S Bobsled team.  Where are you?”  I raised my hand sheepishly.  “What, were you inspired by the Jamaicans or something?”

How can I work this into a new icebreaker story?